Games Inbox: DiRT Showdown, Tekken Tag 2, and Amnesia

The evening Inbox has another advocate for Id Software’s Rage, as one reader gets inexplicably angry about Lego Batman 2. To add your own comments to the Inbox simply email us at
gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk.

DiRT Showdown – cheapening its predecessors

Shopping hypocrisyI’m very happy with DiRT Showdown. I haven’t bought it yet, but it did push DiRT 3: Complete Edition down to a nice budget price. Three cheers for endless sequelisation!But if you do hate overstretched series and yearly updates, please, please just stop buying them. I cannot begin to express the sweltering enmity I have for people who buy the latest Call Of Duty, only to write in and moan about its lack of innovation, or who go to see Transformers 4 after cursing a blue streak over two and three. I’m not a fan of Assassin’s Creed, so I won’t buy Assassin’s Creed 3, nor will I ever dream of criticising those who do. Stop paying for things you hate. It’s the only effective way to register your disapproval.Toby BalcombePS: That is not to advocate piracy. Stealing indicates a demand, too.It rhymes tooI have to say that I’m interested in Tekken Tag Tournament 2, what I’ve seen looks promising. It’s so nice to see a fighting game that wants to give us more than the bare bones basics. And no, I did not like the first game. I remember in one of the Dreamcast magazines at a time, a reader said that ‘SoulCalibur makes Tekken Tag look like a man in drag.’ That’s still one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. Only this time, the latest SoulCalibur looked a little bit stubbly to me…DMRCheap scaresAs some readers have already mentioned, there are quite a few great deals on Steam at the moment. Excellent indie titles such as Bastion, Limbo, and The Binding Of Isaac are between £1 to £3, so you really can’t go wrong there. For horror fans, there’s also the wonderfully disturbing Amnesia: Dark Descent currently at £3.24. It shares a similar tone to the recent Slender, which I know a few readers have enjoyed. The game almost sadistically wrings the fear from your imagination and sense of vulnerability, and perhaps worst of all, knowing that you must never ever turn and look.Regarding Matt Lawton and buying a gaming laptop, I would first say you get a whole lot more for your money with a desktop PC. However, if portability is essential, PC Specialist is very informative and allows you to customise everything from the graphics card to the kind of display you want. They offer excellent service and support and are pretty good value, too. I’m sure another reader can give some more specific advice, though.evilsee (Steam ID)/evilsee2 (PSN ID)GC:We’d also particularly recommend Amnesia. At that price it’s embarrassingly good value.

Building angerI’ve always been a little dubious about the Lego games but I did like the Lego Clone Wars game, I found it to be mindless fun and a relaxing gaming experience. Last week I saw Lego Batman 2 in a supermarket for £31.99 which seemed reasonable started playing it last night and I’ve played the first few levels this morning and I have to say I absolutely hate it.The camera is awful and it’s unforgivable that there is no option to invert the Y axis. The vehicle sections suck, I don’t like the open world style hub and don’t get me started on all those annoying power suits to get through the levels, Robin’s magnetic outfit is particularly fiddly to use. Boy oh boy do I hate this game.The Lego games are obviously a good idea and fun when done right but it’s being milked for all its worth, which would be fine if the games were actually good or fun to play. Ahhh nice to get that out of my system So when is Dark Souls 2 out?mitchellGC:That’s a strange game to get so angry about, especially if you like Clone Wars – which has almost identical game mechanics and camera. Most people consider Batman 2 one of the best Lego games so far, especially because of the open world hub.Queasy graphicsRE: Darren Wright and motion sickness. I had a similar experience to you once. I play lots of games with different perspectives, but for some reason I started getting motion sickness when playing Dead Space on my laptop – evidently my eyes did not like HD graphics on a small(ish) screen. Maybe if you turn down the resolution the effect will be reduced? Unfortunately I still get bouts of this problem, but it seems to not only vary day-by-day, but hour-by-hour.Joseph DowlandPretty coloursJust finished Mass Effect 3… wow! Amazing game. As for the ending I really don’t know why everyone was so upset by it. Also I’m hooked on the multiplayer! Can’t seem to get off it. If any fellow GCers want to add me for some mulitplayer fun add me as all my mates are all Call Of Duty and Battlefield lovers!GlitchTx8Harsh adviceRE: zbigdaddy gz. If HD6770 is going to be your upgrade and you want to play Battlefield 3, etc. you haven’t done your research properly. Unless you expect to play on lower resolutions. You should be looking at a NVIDIA GeForce 560TI which will play anything at 1080p resolution (max settings, etc.) and can be bought for around £130-£190. Or maybe an ATI HD-6850 and above if preferred AMD.UnErVeD (gamertag/PSN ID)GC:That seems very helpful, but no need to be so rude about it.No contestRegarding joypad vs. mouse and keyboard; I don’t get why you got so upset Up4Banter, of course it was only GC’s opinion, it was awfully redundant of you to try to use that as a counter point.They asserted nothing as fact, you inferred that for yourself because you had a (baffling) chip on your shoulder.A mouse is simply far more accurate for aiming due to the lack of dead zones and comparative sluggishness that analogue sticks naturally possess. WASD controls work perfectly well for movement in conjunction with mouse looking. I’ve played Crysis 2 on both console and PC and despite being more used to joypads over the years, I did better with the PC aiming and controls than I did with the more sluggish and dead zone crippled controls of the console version. Even with the sensitivity turned way up, it just can’t compensate for the immediacy of a mouse.dennett316Theoretical winnerTo further add to the debate about what’s the most ‘efficient’ way to play first person shooters, I would say a theoretical Wii Remote 2 with an analogue stick would trounce all. Nunchuck for movement, and then you’d have looking and aiming independently controlled with the Wii Remote. With this setup, you can aim up high but still have the view focussed at ground level if needed. Of course, this is all a dream right now.ttfp saylow (gamertag)Promoting RageRE: Big Angry Dad82. It’s funny you mention Rage. I myself just picked it up for £8 and was just about to write in about it myself. The price was good, so I thought I’d give it a go. Really glad I did, as I’m having a lot of fun with it. It plays really well, I find the combat extremely satisfying, the graphics top notch, and the frame rate consistently silky smooth and the driving handles well. There’s a lot of nice touches in the game.It’s hard to explain, but each firefight or encounter feels like a mini event in itself and I struggle to think of a game that beats the animation on the characters during combat. They react precisely to where you hit them, and I mean precicely. Knocking them back or down, taking their leg away from them, hitting them in the arm affects their combat.There was one bit already (I’m still early in the game) where I hit an enemy in chest. He fell down behind the cover he was behind. His mate said, ‘Are you OK, can you fight’ or something down those lines, to which he said ‘No, I can’t he’s hit me bad, I’ll try and get away’, at which point he stumbled to his feet and as he slowly limped away, heading for the door behind them. At which point I put a couple of rounds in his back and dropped him permanently.Now this wasn’t a cut scene or set piece, this was a standard gunfight against a few guys. I wasn’t expecting this level of characterisation and AI behaviour in the game, especially as it’s an Id game, but hats off to them.I don’t know why more games don’t make enemies react as realistically to bullets when I think about it. The game has a structure similar to Borderlands but with a more realistic look and comparisons to Fallout. In fact to me, it’s Fallout but with far superior combat mechanics. Enjoying this game a lot, needless to say.Spartas EdgeInbox also-ransGC, is this the longest summer games draught on record?Dark Anima X (gamertag)GC:It is by far the shortest, or certainly the least severe. Last year there was almost two and half months without any major releases, but this year’s schedule has something at least halfway notable out almost every week.Any new news on how the Phoenix Wright movie is coming along, and when we can expect it to be released?bd909GC: It came out in February in Japan and seems to have been reasonably successful. It is apparently being localised for a Western release.If Pokémon were real wouldn’t that be the scariest thing ever? I mean a lot of them are specifically described as carnivores.HoustonTo the reader who is suffering motion sickness while gaming, can I just say that this issue affected myself also. The cure for me was to balance the empty case on my head whilst playing any first person shooter game. That’ll be £9.99 please.greg bourbon

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